Happy New Year! Hopefully, the first day of 2015 will see some new snow. We need it.

But... things are finally taking some form after the massive blow-down of many, MANY trees before Christmas. I think it took Dave and me a total of 20+ hours to get all that cleared. Sorry to keep mentioning that, but dang, that was an awful lot of work to clean up!

OK, onto the trail conditions:

Things are covered and the trail is quite skiable, but bring rock skis. There are some thin areas and a lot of debris from the tree cutting, etc. Rocks are just beneath in a few areas too, especially the main trail between the intersections of Dave's Dogleg and TJ's loop.

It's lumpy and bumpy, but not bad for skating and pretty nice for classic touring. There's no classic track set yet, but with just a little more, we'll be able to set it. The lower road is also in good shape out to Point O, but not so great above that due to rough trails underneath and of course the meadow always needs more snow to be skiable. You can can back into the woods at Point O, or turn around and take "Clay's Cutoff" at Point B (groomed).

There are lots of aspen shoots still thriving on the edges of the trail, especially on Dave's Dogleg and the upper meadow. Please take a little time to cut a few if you can -- 10 minutes can do a lot of good. Be sure to cut them down below the snow line! That really helps a lot. I kept running out of time during this fall's work days and it would get dark, so I missed a few spots. Now, my 44 yr-old back is worn out from lifting logs and I don't feel like bending over to cut any more aspen shoots!

We'll try to stay on top of the grooming with the new snow, but be patient. We are down to almost no groomers now. Hopefully, we'll get some more reinforcements in January sometime.

Resolution Race will be on Sunday, January 11. I'll send out more details later. We'll do a kids fun thing too, after the adults event.

Fredrik Landstedt, head ski coach of UNM, is planning on grooming trails
(most of which have been extensively leveled by some volunteers using
shoveling and snow shoes) between the 10K parking lot (on the lower
elevation side) up to the tram service road, including an upper loop
above the service road. He will be doing this on the 1st or 2nd
(Thursday or Friday). If you can help with further preparation please
notify with an email to
ronmccurley@comcast.net or chris@sandiasoap.com.

Monday, December 29, 2014

Since there is some activity on the trails with the new snow, mega-bad wind and subsequent tree-fall, I thought I'd send an update.

So yeah, the wind did a number on all the weak trees around the trails. I estimate that close to 50 trees fell, many in clusters of 5 to 10 trees. That has made for a big mess to clean up, and with only a couple of us, it's been slow progress. But the good news is that it's getting close to being done.

To get out there, we did pull a groomer through the trails, so there is a little bit of "groomed" trail open for skiing. I hope to finish that up this evening, pending getting the tree cutting job all done. The last big snags have to be cleared off of Dave's Dogleg, but the rest of the system should be clear now.

Please take some time, if you go out to ski, to pick up some of the debris (branches, sticks, etc.) in those bad spots where we cleared out the deadfall. That stuff is a mess and although we did clear a lot of it out when we cleared the big trees, we couldn't get it all.

Coverage is still thin and you'll certainly hit a thing or two here and there, but some spots look great.

After this first round of work, we'll take a break and probably won't get around to grooming until next week. Dave is gone, and I will likely be doing stuff with my family over the holiday weekend.

One last thing: if things look good after this round of storms, we may hold the "Annual Resolution Race" on either the 10th or 11th of January. I'll update on that as we know for sure (via email, on our facebook page and here on the blog). It's FREE and hopefully we can also do a fun event for the kiddos too.

Tuesday, December 23, 2014

Sandia peak has received more than a foot of snow and there is fair classic skiing on the service road and some feeder trails in that area and I also have reports of fair skiing near the 10k trailhead (south).
There has been no grooming thus far. I have a manual track setter but need help to do anything if anyone wants to help set some classic tracks.